All eyes on the zebra’s stripes

Richard Collins asks what is the purpose of a zebra’s colouring?

ZEBRAS are horses in prison clothes. People sometimes ask if their coats are black with white stripes or white with black ones. Hair is naturally white, whereas black pigment must be produced in the animal’s body. The underlying zebra colour is, therefore, white. But the really intriguing question about the stripes is why they exist at all? Nobody is sure of the answer to this question but there are theories.

The most obvious suggestion is that the stripes make life difficult for the zebra’s enemies. Lions are the animal’s greatest threat. A pride, hunting together, selects a potential victim, usually a vulnerable individual, before launching a co-ordinated attack. As soon as the predators are spotted, the zebras flee. The lions must then keep their target animal in sight, separate it from the crowd and pursue it to exhaustion.